Whanganui letters: Minimise waste and save, Greens flying high, private schools

have put out four bags in 12 months, writes one reader. Photo / file

Minimise waste and save

Re the bag vs box on wheels debate.

I have put out four bags in 12 months. I compost all my organic waste or feed birds and budgies with green waste, put all trimmings in the garden to recycle into veges and finally my garden paths are lined in cardboard.

I do not have a computer; I gave mine up after 40 years and OOS diagnosis. I don't have a mobile phone and as with F A Harris (Letters, August 19) I put out cans and legal plastic boxes to the recycling centre.

So what goes in the bag? Cat food surrounds, soft plastic food wrap and aluminium foil food boxes from chicken roasts.

My costs of $4.20 to $4.80 a week for a plastic box on plastic wheels? No thanks.

C COUPER
Whanganui

Only beginning for Greens

I'm wondering why the recent Roy Morgan Poll is missing from your paper ...

This poll shows the Greens at 11 per cent. That is much higher than the Colmar Brunton poll from a month ago that has been used in the Chronicle until last week.

But then, another poll taken at the same time, the UMR poll, shows the Greens at 3.2 per cent. Unlike the Roy Morgan Poll, this poll is commissioned by Labour.

Wikipedia says that the UMR is sometimes "leaked" to the press. They state that "their details are not publicly available for viewing and scrutinising."

We have no idea of their sample numbers, the margin of error (it could be +-8 per cent for all we know), or methods ...

Somehow this is commonplace, while the highly reputable Roy Morgan Poll covering the same time period is ignored. Why?

Their numbers are likely much higher than we are being told. What we do know is that the Greens have done a lot of good so far. They will continue to do so. They passed the Zero Carbon Act through Parliament. They established the independent Climate Change Commission. They ended fossil fuel subsidies and banned new offshore oil and gas exploration. They reprioritised transport planning. And they set up the Green Investment Fund. That is only the beginning. [Abridged]

DIANA MELLOR
Waverley

On private schools

Carol Webb (Letters, September 11) does not alert you to what the controversy with the green school in Taranaki was about: the Green Party wants to abandon private schools - this is a private school and Shaw said if the funding didn't go through he would not sign off funding for other schools.

Carol then tries to explain it away by bringing Collegiate School funding into the argument: two things - Collegiate is an important business in Whanganui bringing a lot of money.

It is hard to understand the opposition to private and integrated schools as they take a lot of financial stress from the public school system, the private school parents pay for public school pupils to be educated and then pay separately for their own children's education.

They have many reasons for this: the boarding option gives country kids more opportunity and if parents are very busy it allows less stress on their daily lives. [Abridged]

GARTH SCOWN
Whanganui

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